Achieving Escape Velocity
by IrenaAdler
Summary: Takes place after Five Weeks. In my 'verse, Charlie and Colby are together, but Charlie and Amita hooked up while Colby was in jail, to break up again when Colby returned. Pt 1: Amita needs someone to talk to. Pt 2: Amita gets some terrifying news.
1. Pt 1: Achieving Escape Velocity

**A/N: **Takes place right after my story "Five Weeks" about the time between Janus List and Trust Metric. In my 'verse, Charlie and Colby are together, but Charlie and Amita hooked up while Colby was gone, to break up again when Colby returned.

**Achieving Escape Velocity—**

Amita hadn't known where her wandering feet were taking her until she arrived there. She'd been walking unconsciously around the campus, her thoughts running in endless, pointless circles. She looked up and saw a door that stated, 'Dr. Lawrence Fleinhart.' She sighed, about to turn away when she heard a noise on the other side of the door.

She knocked tentatively on the door, calling, "Larry?" It was probably just the cleaning staff. Last she heard, Larry was still at the monastery.

The sound inside the room paused then became furtive. Amita frowned. She didn't think there was much to steal in Larry's office, but she didn't want anything messed up for when Larry did come back.

She tried the doorknob and it was unlocked. Hefting her purse like a weapon, she eased open the door.

A very familiar back was bent over a bookshelf in the corner.

"Larry?" Amita said, and Larry jumped and spun around.

"I just wanted some books," Larry said, cradling several books to his chest possessively.

"It's okay," Amita said, since Larry looked so guilty. "I just wanted to make sure that no one was ransacking your office."

"Oh," Larry said, relaxing a little. "I appreciate your desire to preserve my office order, such that it is."

Amita stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. "Do they not let you have books at the monastery?"

"Oh, yes, of course they do, but meditation is supposed to be unaided contemplation but I was meditating yesterday on missing books, so …" He waved a hand in agitation and almost dropped his books.

Amita hurried forward to help his book juggling act and together they landed the books on a corner of his desk.

"Thank you," Larry said. "To what do I owe your timely intervention, or do you regularly patrol the hallways of the Physics Department in search of interlopers?"

"I was just walking and thinking."

"Ah, moving meditation. Most productive, I have found." Larry seemed to focus on her for the first time. "Or was there a particular topic to your cogitations?"

Amita grimaced. "Yeah."

Larry pushed the books farther onto the desk. "If I may be of some aid as a sounding board or active reflector or perhaps a planar mirror …"

Amita gave him a grateful smile. "I really do need someone like that."

Larry sat down in a nearby chair, folded his legs underneath him and put his chin on his hands.

Amita pulled up another chair, searching for a way to start. "You know what went on with Colby, right?"

"Yes," Larry said with gentle reproach. "I helped find his captors, remember?"

"Right, right," Amita said, sinking into the chair. "But you know what happened in between … with me and Charlie?"

"Yes."

Amita wasn't sure what to make of Larry's unadorned response. She looked down at her hands. "When he … when Colby was gone, Charlie turned to me and I went _running_. I feel pretty foul doing that to Colby, but Charlie … I couldn't tell him 'no.'"

"No, you've never been able to," Larry said quietly.

Amita nodded glumly.

Larry waited patiently and finally Amita looked up and asked, "Do you know Professor Saha?"

Larry blinked owlishly at her. "I wasn't in space that long. Yes, I know Dr. Joseph Saha."

"Well," she said uncomfortably, almost as if she was revealing a dirty secret. "Before the latest thing with Charlie, I'd kind of been going out with him."

Larry nodded then tilted his head at her. "But?"

"I like him a lot," she said.

"But?" Larry pressed gently.

Amita gave a groan and put her head in her hands. "But he's not Charlie."

"And that's the problem?"

"That's both the problem and the good part," Amita mumbled into her hands.

"I see."

Amita lifted her head. "_When_? When am I going to be able to stop rating every man in comparison to Charlie?"

"Let me ask you this question," Larry said. "How old were you when you first met Charles?"

"Umm," Amita said, calculating. "Eighteen, the first time I saw him lecture. Twenty-two before I got to know him."

"And, if I may ask a more delicate question, were you immediately … enamored of him?"

Amita flushed. "Pretty much."

Larry gave her an understanding smile. "It is as I thought. You met Charles when you were very young, still forming your image of your ideal mate. Charles remained inaccessible to you for many years, due to your roles as student and teacher, further cementing the idealized image, untarnished by the complexities of an actual relationship. So when you are in a relationship with him, you are unsatisfied because he does not match that idealized image, but when you are not in a relationship with him, you continue to desire him as the ideal mate."

Amita stared at him.

Larry rested his chin back on his hands and said, "Charles is a gravity well of significant depth. Light and reality bend around him and we lesser objects are inexorably pulled towards him, drawn into orbit around him."

"So there's no escape?"

"Of course, there's escape. It might require more delta-vee, but ultimately that will give you a greater escape velocity."

"You're saying that it might require a lot of energy to break free from Charlie, but I'll be all the stronger for it."

Larry nodded and Amita sighed. Larry made it sound so simple.

Larry stared off into space for a moment, then said, "Tell me about Joseph Saha."

Amita felt an involuntary smile. "Joseph is funny and sweet. He's brilliant, maybe not as brilliant as Charlie, but who is? Joseph is a lot more emotionally savvy. We have a lot in common beyond math or physics. And when we're together, we're _together_. I'm not just something that occasionally crosses his mind. See, there I go, comparing him to Charlie again."

"Comparing him largely favorably, though."

"Joseph, he's more of a ..." Amita searched for an appropriate cosmological metaphor. "He's a single star and I'm a single star. We're on the same scale, not that one of us a star and the other a planetary object."

Larry tilted his head. "Maybe you, Charles and Joseph can be an example of the classic three-body problem. Three stars of comparable mass converge but create an unstable system. Eventually one of the three stars will be ejected and the remaining two will form a stable binary system."

Amita gave a dry chuckle. "What if I'm the star that's ejected?"

"Actually, that isn't really a good metaphor for the situation, since Charlie isn't of comparable mass to anyone, which is the crux of the problem. And there's also a fourth object in the equation – Colby," Larry said. "He and Charles are forming their own binary system, like Cygnus X-1, where a blue supergiant is in orbit around a black hole. Colby is of significant magnitude and luminosity to counterbalance his heavy companion, surviving and even thriving under forces that would destroy the rest of us."

"So Colby's a better match than I am," Amita said bitterly.

"That nothing to be ashamed of – or proud of, for that matter. Like stars, we find our place in the universe through the complex interaction of galaxies, through the tug of different gravities and contact with other objects. Perhaps Joseph Saha is your companion star, perhaps not. The only way to know if you can create a binary stellar system is to be in proximity with him, to see if you can orbit around a common center of gravity in which you balance each other." He frowned. "However, that's a problematic metaphor as well because it is believed that binary systems are usually formed from the fragmentation of the molecular cloud of a protostar when—"

"I get it, Larry," Amita said.

Larry blinked. "Yes?"

"I might be a good match for my idealized Charlie, but Colby's a good match for the real Charlie, and it's time I stopped trying to coordinate orbits with him and go see other stars—people. Like if I turn around and look towards a different part of the sky, I won't be so blinded by Star Charlie and might be able see other stars."

"Yes!" Larry said proudly.

Amita smiled. "Larry, you're a really good friend."

"Thank you," Larry responded gravely. "That is an appellation I do not take lightly."

Amita's smile widened as she stood up. "Thank you," she said and kissed Larry on the forehead. "I'll let you get back to book smuggling."

"Perhaps I should smuggle in some white chocolate as well," Larry said, stroking his beard.

Amita chuckled and headed towards the door.

As she opened the door, Larry called, "Amita?"

She turned back. "Yes?"

Larry gazed solemnly at her, his face and his cross-legged position making him look like an earnest Buddha. "It's time to stop saying 'yes' to Charles, and to start saying 'yes' to yourself."

Amita gave him a nod and a crooked smile. "You're right." She shut the door behind her.

She walked down the hallway feeling a great deal, even solar masses, lighter. The day seemed full of possibilities instead of dead ends, the beginnings of galaxies instead of collapsing solar systems.

She turned her back on Star Charlie and went to find her true companion star.


	2. Pt 2: Creating a New Solar System

**Creating a New Solar System—**

Amita was in her office, sobbing, when Joseph found her. She'd been trying to work, trying to distract herself, but hadn't succeeded. Her brain was a million miles away from astrophysics, cycling through horror scenarios faster than a computer.

"Amita!" Joseph said, shutting the door behind him and quickly coming to her side.

It was a thoughtful gesture, shutting the door so that no one else would see her distress, and was the sort of thing that Joseph did unconsciously. For some reason, that made her cry harder.

"Amita?" Joseph handed her a handkerchief. One of those old-fashioned kind that she didn't know anyone carried anymore. That thought distracted her enough so that she was able to suck in a breath and stop sobbing.

Joseph put his hand on her shoulder as she wiped her face and blew her nose. She balled the handkerchief up in her hands and looked up at him. He took his hand away, as if he thought it might be unwanted.

"What's wrong—" Joseph started.

"I'm pregnant," Amita blurted out.

Joseph stared at her. Then he asked, very quietly, "Does Eppes know?"

Amita's hands clenched together and she ground out, "It's yours."

Joseph took a step back. "Mine? Are you sure?"

"Yes," Amita said with utter certainty. "I know it." She couldn't read Joseph's face, his reaction. She tried to catch her breath and speak rationally. "I know because—when the whole … thing happened with Charlie –"

"After he used you then left you," Joseph growled.

Amita blinked at him. She'd no idea that Joseph felt that way. She'd gone crawling back to Joseph and he'd taken her back without a comment. She shook her head, trying to clear it. "When the thing happened with Charlie, I was very depressed. I started taking an herbal remedy that had helped me in the past. I'd forgotten that St. John's Wort can reduce the effectiveness of the Pill. It had to have been the first time that we … that first time because I had my p-period last cycle, like normal. But when I took the inert pills this time, so my period was supposed to start, it didn't start. I waited for a week, thinking that maybe it was stress, then I took a home test, but it wasn't clear, so I went to the doctor yesterday and she called this morning …"

"Wow," Joseph said, sitting heavily in a nearby chair. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm keeping it!" Amita said fiercely. "Don't you dare say—"

"No, no," Joseph said. "That's not what I meant. Of _course_, you're keeping it. Well, I mean, having it then … adoption?"

Amita shook her head, curling her arms around herself protectively.

"What about your career?" Joseph asked, with an odd note in his voice.

"People have kids and careers."

"I always assumed that you didn't want …" Joseph looked carefully at her face, then said, "I'll marry you, of course."

"God!" Amita said bitterly. "A pity marriage! That's the last thing I want." That was one of the horror scenarios that was haunting Amita – a rushed marriage by her parents to someone that loathed her and her baby.

Joseph grimaced. "I meant that we can get married now and then divorced in a year, so our—your baby won't have any stigma attached to him because of an unmarried mother."

That was even worse – a pity marriage followed by a pity divorce. "Great," Amita said tightly, holding back the tears. "Do you want me to sign a contract saying I'll agree to divorce you?"

"No," Joseph said. "I'm just trying … I'm trying to ask you to marry me in a way that won't make you run away. I want …"

Joseph took a deep breath, reached across the space that separated them, and gripped her hand. "I've been trying to get your attention since I came to CalSci, but with you, it was always about Eppes."

"I know, but—"

"Please," Joseph said gently, "Let me finish. When you finally agreed to go out with me, I was a happy man. I figured that I'd either find out that you weren't as wonderful as you seemed or I'd fall in love with you. The second thing happened. That first date was great and then we had a second date and a third … I began to hope that you might care about me, too.

"Then Eppes … and you went back to him. I figured that was it, I'd lost my chance to capture your attention. I wasn't as fascinating, as sexy, as desirable as Eppes."

He held up a hand when Amita tried to protest. "When Eppes got back with his boyfriend and you came back to me, I should have been angry, felt like the lesser man. But, well, maybe I _am_ the lesser man because what mattered is that I had you again. And things between us seemed even better than before. But in the last few days, you've been distant and I began to worry. I know now that you were concerned you were pregnant."

Amita nodded silently.

Joseph continued, in the same gentle but definite voice, "I want to marry you, be with you, raise our baby together, share my life with you. Maybe that's too much to ask of you all at once, though. Especially with just finding out that you're gonna have a baby. So I wonder if you'll accept a year. A year to let me show you how much I care about you, and perhaps the chance for you to learn to care about me, too."

Amita stared at him, speechless.

Joseph gave her a slight smile. "Don't think of me as a man asking the woman he got pregnant to marry him out of duty or guilt. Rather, I'm a man who suddenly sees everything he's ever wanted in front of him and is trying to have the nerve to grab it."

"You … you want this baby?" she stammered.

"The baby and you, more than anything."

"Wow," Amita said. "Wow." She rubbed her salty cheek, trying to process what Joseph had just said. "You …"

"I love you, Amita Ramanujan," Joseph said clearly. "And I want to marry you and raise a family."

"Whoa … Um … okay."

"Okay?" Joseph asked with a surprised snort. "What does 'okay' mean?"

"Okay … okay we can get married and raise this baby and …" She looked at her hand, held in his. "I'd always thought that love was this burning, all-consuming, crazy-making thing. Maybe it's not, maybe that's something else. Lust or insanity or something. Maybe I've never had a chance to be in love." She smiled shyly at him. "I'd like to try."

"You think there might be a chance?" Joseph asked, light shining in his eyes.

"Yeah, a good chance." A corner of her mouth twitched up in a crooked smile. "But don't ask me to give odds."

"Darn," Joseph said, his voice a little shaky. "I thought you math people were all about the numbers."

"I'm a physics people, now," Amita said, squeezing his hand. "But Joseph?"

"Yes?"

"You'll never be the lesser man, never. Whatever Charlie is, he's not a better man than you."

Joseph looked uncertain.

"In fact …" Amita handed the handkerchief back to him and stood up, keeping a hold of Joseph's hand. "I think you're the best man I've ever known."

Joseph gave her a soft smile, the smile that he'd given her when she'd first said she'd go out with him. It had been that smile that had told her that she'd made the right decision then, and that she'd made the right decision now.

"I really need to go wash my face," Amita said. "Walk me to the bathroom?"

"Certainly," Joseph said, wiping remaining wetness from her face.

At a sudden thought, Amita gave a snort. "Oh Joseph, there is one thing about you that I really can't stand."

"Only one?" Joseph asked, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm.

"My parents are going to adore you."

Joseph chuckled. "Oh no, that's awful."

"It is!" Amita said. "I've hated every man they've ever shoved at me and so it bothers me that I like you."

"You like me?"

"Yeah," Amita said. "Most definitely."

"A good start," Joseph smiled. He turned and they began to slowly walk towards the door. "Now, let's see. About your parents … I can dye my hair pink."

"You would do that for me?"

"Well … Only as a last resort."

"Good, I like it how it is." She brushed a strand from his forehead.

"I could drive a motorcycle or join a rock band or … I've got it, I'll figure out whatever your father's position is on the mass density of the universe and 'dark energy' and argue the other side."

"Let's not get carried away!" Amita laughed.

"Oh, I quite plan on getting carried away," Joseph said with an impish smile that made Amita's heart flutter unexpectedly. "I've not only snagged the most desirable physicist on campus—"

"Not a lot of competition."

"—but I'm gonna be a daddy to the smartest baby ever."

Amita grinned, and snuggled closer to Joseph, feeling for the first time in weeks … months? … _years?_ … that she was loved.


End file.
